Incubation in Problem Solving and Creativity Unconscious Processes 1St Edition Kenneth J Gilhooly Online Ebook Texxtbook Full Chapter PDF

Incubation In Problem Solving And
Creativity Unconscious Processes 1st

Edition Kenneth J Gilhooly
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/incubation-in-problem-solving-and-creativity-unconsci
ous-processes-1st-edition-kenneth-j-gilhooly/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Encyclopedia of Community Policing and Problem Solving

1st Edition Kenneth J Peak
https://ebookmeta.com/product/encyclopedia-of-community-policing-
and-problem-solving-1st-edition-kenneth-j-peak/
Negotiation Processes for Problem Solving 3rd Edition

Carrie J Menkel Meadow Andrea Kupfer Schneider Lela
Porter Love
https://ebookmeta.com/product/negotiation-processes-for-problem-
solving-3rd-edition-carrie-j-menkel-meadow-andrea-kupfer-
schneider-lela-porter-love/
Legal problem solving and syllogistic analysis a guide

for foundation law students 1st Edition Kenneth Yin
https://ebookmeta.com/product/legal-problem-solving-and-
syllogistic-analysis-a-guide-for-foundation-law-students-1st-
edition-kenneth-yin/
Problem Solving with C 10th Edition Walter J Savitch
https://ebookmeta.com/product/problem-solving-with-c-10th-
edition-walter-j-savitch/
How to Solve A Problem: Insights for Critical Thinking,
Problem-Solving, and Success in College 1st Edition
Kelling J. Donald
https://ebookmeta.com/product/how-to-solve-a-problem-insights-
for-critical-thinking-problem-solving-and-success-in-college-1st-
edition-kelling-j-donald/
Odell's Clinical Problem Solving in Dentistry 4th

Edition Avijit Banerjee
https://ebookmeta.com/product/odells-clinical-problem-solving-in-
dentistry-4th-edition-avijit-banerjee/
Mathematics in Middle and Secondary School A Problem

Solving Approach 1st Edition Alexander Karp
https://ebookmeta.com/product/mathematics-in-middle-and-
secondary-school-a-problem-solving-approach-1st-edition-
alexander-karp/
Fun and Games Recess Problem Solving Dona Herweck Rice
https://ebookmeta.com/product/fun-and-games-recess-problem-
solving-dona-herweck-rice/
Problem Solving Cognitive Mechanisms and Formal Models

Zygmunt Pizlo
https://ebookmeta.com/product/problem-solving-cognitive-
mechanisms-and-formal-models-zygmunt-pizlo/
INCUBATION IN PROBLEM
SOLVING AND CREATIVITY
Can problems be solved by setting them aside or by sleeping on them?

Incubation, the process of stopping conscious work on problems for a set
period of time, is an integral part of the creative problem solving process.
Providing an overview of the main issues, findings and implications of
cognitive research on incubation effects in problem solving and creativ-
ity, this book argues that incubation is an effective strategy for tackling
problems that do not yield to initial solution attempts. Gilhooly reasons
that unconscious work is automatic and explores the underlying processes
involved in incubation, providing evidence to showcase the major role of
unconscious processing in problem solving. Incubation in Problem Solving and
Creativity concludes with a discussion of the implications of unconscious
work theory for enhanced problem solving, positioning incubation as an
effective and important stage in creative problem solving.
This book is an invaluable resource for students and researchers of prob-
lem solving, creativity and thinking and reasoning as well as for students
from all disciplines taking problem solving modules.
Kenneth J. Gilhooly is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the Univer-

sity of Hertfordshire, UK. He is a former Chair of the Cognitive Section
of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and has served on the Eco-
nomic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Research Grants Board and
the ESRC College of Assessors.
INCUBATION IN
PROBLEM SOLVING
AND CREATIVITY
Unconscious Processes
Kenneth J. Gilhooly
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2019 Kenneth J. Gilhooly
The right of Kenneth J. Gilhooly to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gilhooly, K. J., author.
Title: Incubation in problem solving and creativity: unconscious
processes / Kenneth J. Gilhooly.
Description: 1 Edition. | New York: Routledge, 2019. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019003366 | ISBN 9781138551510 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138551534 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Problem solving. | Creative ability. | Subconsciousness.
Classification: LCC BF449 .G467 2019 | DDC 153.4/3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019003366
ISBN: 978-1-138-55151-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-55153-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-14761-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
CONTENTS
Preface viii
Acknowledgements ix
1 Problems, problem solving and creativity 1

Introduction: problems, problems, problems 1
Solving non-insight problems: forward search and hill-climbing 3
Problem reduction and means-ends analysis 7
Solving insight problems: re-structuring 8
Barriers to insight: set 11
Further barriers to insight: functional fixity 12
Comparing insight vs non-insight problems 12
Representational change theory 14
Working memory, insight and non-insight problem solving 17
Impasse → insight sequence: necessary or not? 18
Generic Parts Technique 18
Insight processes: conclusions 19
Creative problems 19
Creative problem solving: divergent thinking 22
Incubation? 24
vi Contents
2 Historical background to the “incubation” concept 25

Personal accounts 25
The Wallas model: background 31
Wallas’s stages of control 34
Wallas’s Five Stage model in detail 35
Incubation: validity of personal accounts? 37
Historical background: concluding comments 43
3 Early laboratory based studies of incubation 45

Delayed Incubation effects 46
Incubation literature reviews: narrative and meta-analytic 49
Delayed Incubation: post Sio and Ormerod (2007) studies 51
In conclusion 52
4 Broad theoretical approaches to incubation:

empirical evidence 53
Introduction 53
Intermittent work: evidence 56
Fresh Look: evidence 57
Unconscious work: evidence 58
Mind-wandering and incubation 63
5 Unconscious work: theoretical discussion 67

The subliminal self hypothesis 68
The unconscious: yes, it can? 69
Unconscious combinations: blind variation, selective retention 71
Mechanisms for blind variation 72
Chater’s (2018) objections to unconscious work/processing hypothesis 73
Inspiration: how do solutions suddenly become conscious? 74
Semantic network modelling 76
Goal + Associative Network Interaction (GANI) model 79
6 Sleep on it? 84
Sleep and its stages 85
Personal accounts 86
Empirical studies of sleep effects on problem solving 92
Methodological notes 100
Sleep on it? Discussion and concluding comments 103
Contents vii
7 Overview and conclusions 106

Waking incubation 106
Sleep on it? 109
Waking and sleeping incubation in real life 109
Gaps for future research 110
References 113
Index 125
PREFACE
Can it really be true that problems can be solved by setting them aside
(waking incubation) or by sleeping on them (sleeping incubation)? And if
so, how do these apparently mysterious “incubation” effects arise?
This book aims to set out the main issues, findings and implications of
cognitive psychological research on incubation effects in problem solving
and creativity.
It will be argued that research supports the basic utility of incubation as
an effective strategy for tackling problems that do not yield to initial solu-
tion attempts. Having established the benefits of waking incubation, the
next steps are to address the underlying processes, and I go on to examine
the main theories that seek to explain waking incubation.
Are waking incubation effects due to the forgetting of misleading ap-
proaches, to intermittent conscious work or to unconscious processing?
Overall, I conclude that research findings indicate a major role for uncon-
scious processing.
Drawing on previous analyses and accepted principles in cognitive sci-
ence, I propose that unconscious processing is automatic but with a major
role for goals in boosting initially unconscious results into consciousness.
A mechanism in terms of spreading activation is outlined.
“Sleeping on it” is a form of incubation which is often suggested. Is it
also good advice? I review the evidence from personal accounts and labo-
ratory studies which suggest that it is indeed often useful.
Waking and sleeping forms of incubation are discussed as complemen-
tary forms of processing that can both contribute to effective problem solv-
ing and creativity.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank very much my long time collaborator, George Georgiou,
for his role in our planning and carrying out much of the e mpirical work that
has informed this book. I would also like to thank other researchers in the
field who have discussed problems in understanding incubation with me over
the years and have helped shape my views, without necessarily agreeing with
me; in particular, and in alphabetical order, Linden Ball, Lindsey Carruthers,
Jane Garrison, Penelope Lewis, Carola Salvi, Miroslav Sirota, Frédérick
Vallée-Tourangeau and Margaret Webb.
1
PROBLEMS, PROBLEM SOLVING
AND CREATIVITY
Introduction: problems, problems, problems

Since our focus is on the possible effects of setting problems aside, generally
known as “incubation”, let us start by defining “problems” and outlining
the main features of problems. Over 70 years ago, Karl Duncker (1945)
gave a useful definition of a problem as a situation in which an organism
has a goal but does not know how to reach that goal. So, if a person with no
knowledge of car mechanics has the goal of starting a car and finds turning
the ignition key yields only a “clunk” sound without the engine firing,
then that person will have a problem. A skilled car mechanic who has the
required knowledge would not have a problem.
Of course, problems come in many shapes and sizes, but it seems that
all problems have three main components. These are (1) a goal, (2) a
starting state of affairs in which the goal is not met and (3) a set of pos-
sible actions that if applied in the right order could change the situation
to achieve the goal. Although we can say that all problems share this
common abstract structure, it is also true that problems can be classified
in various ways. One classification is into those problems in which all
the elements of the problem, the starting state, the goal and the actions
available for moving from the starting state to the goal, are well-defined
or completely specified as against problems where some or all elements
are ill-defined or not completely specified (Reitman, 1964; Simon, 1973;
Lynch et al., 2006; Reed, 2016). A chess problem is a prototypical exam-
ple of a well-defined problem, in which the starting state is given by the
2 Problems, problem solving and creativity
layout of standard pieces on the standard board, the goal is well-defined

(say, “Checkmate for White in three moves”) and the means available
are specified by the legal moves of the pieces in the game. On the other
hand, a problem may be very ill-defined, such as that of “Improving the
quality of life in this country”, in which the starting state, the goal state
and the means available are not at all well-defined. In ill-defined prob-
lems, it does seem likely that an initial step will be to try to convert the
problem into a better defined one by trying out possible specifications
of the ill-defined components (Weisberg, 2006, p. 139). In the problem
of “Improving the quality of life”, some of the missing details could be
filled in by deciding on a particular way of measuring quality of life.
One could try using a well-established questionnaire measure, such as the
World Health Organisation Quality of Life (WHO-QOL) questionnaire
(WHO-QOL group, 1995), and that would help specify the starting state
(e.g. as the mean score on the WHO-QOL for a large representative sam-
ple of people living in the country), and the questionnaire could be used
to assess any effects of interventions as bringing about progress to the goal
or not (e.g. has an intervention led to a significant change in WHO-QOL
scores in the desired direction?).
A second way in which problems can vary is in requiring extensive ex-
pert knowledge (i.e. “knowledge rich” problems) or being within the scope
of any normally educated literate adult (i.e. “knowledge lean” problems).
The typical laboratory puzzle, such as an anagram (e.g. what word has been
scrambled to make the string “rpolbme”?), is a knowledge lean problem.
This means that it can be tackled within a reasonable time by anyone of a
large population of participants. Knowledge rich problems, such as prob-
lems arising in running a nuclear power station, diagnosing car problems,
flying a passenger plane or treating a rare disease, can only be tackled by
very small numbers of highly trained individuals (“experts”). Knowledge
rich problem solving is less easily open to laboratory research than knowl-
edge lean problem solving. Nevertheless, there is a large and growing lit-
erature on expertise effects in problem solving where experts’ approaches
and strategies are contrasted with those of beginners (novices) and peo-
ple with intermediate levels of knowledge between novices and experts
(Ericsson et al., 2006).
Another way of dividing problems is into those that can be solved
by straightforward search processes without any need to re-interpret
the problem statement and those which require re-interpretation or
“re-structuring” of the problem. An example of a problem that could
be solved by routine search is an anagram; for example, by trying out
Problems, problem solving and creativity 3
systematically possible re-arrangements of the letters “ccpteno”, one

could sooner or later find the scrambled word “concept”. Some prob-
lems, however, do typically induce a misleading representation which
then needs a re-interpretation or re-structuring. For example, “How
could a man marry 30 women in one month and break no laws against
bigamy?” Here the typical interpretation of the word “marry” as “be-
coming married to another person” is misleading. “Marry” here must be
re-interpreted as “causing others to become married”. Thus, the man is
authorised to conduct marriages. Another example is “How could a man
walk over the surface of a deep, mile wide lake without any floatation
devices or aids?” This problem requires the solver to move from a default
representation (at least in non-Arctic regions) of the water in the lake
as being in a liquid state and to represent the water instead in a solidly
frozen state. Such problems, which typically require re-structuring or
re-interpretation, are often labelled “insight” problems. Once the ap-
propriate re-structuring occurs the solution is immediately understood.
Problems that are typically solved without re-structuring are often la-
belled as “non-insight” problems.
The classifications into “insight” and “ill-defined” tend to overlap in
that ill-defined problems need initial structuring and often re-structuring,
and so tend to be classifiable as “insight” problems. However, some in-
sight problems are well-defined in terms of starting state, goal and means
available, such as the nine-dot problem, where the starting state is given
(a square 3 × 3 array of dots), the goal state is specified (connect dots by
four straight lines without lifting pen from paper) and the means available
are specified (draw four straight lines without lifting pen from paper to
connect dots).
Solving non-insight problems: forward search and

hill-climbing
How are problems typically solved? Let us start with non-insight tasks as
a simpler case than insight problems. For well-defined problems, in which
the starting state, the goal state and the available actions are all completely
specified, a complete systematic search is, in principle, an algorithmic
way to be sure of solving, without changing the initial problem rep-
resentation. The conceptually simplest approach to actually performing
a complete search is to systematically generate all the possible states that
could be reached from the starting state by applying all possible actions
or moves from the starting state and keep generating new states from
each new state generated until the goal state is reached – whereupon the
problem is solved. If the problem is insoluble, the whole problem space
would be generated. This complete search approach is known as breadth-
first search and in theory is a “magic key” to solve all well-defined problems!
Why then are so many well-defined problems unsolved, such as “Is chess
a game that White should always win, or is it a game that should always
be drawn, if both players play perfectly?” Unfortunately, problems of any
real scale, such as the chess problem, quickly involve astronomically vast
problem spaces with more states than atoms in the universe and cannot re-
alistically be searched completely. Even the humble noughts-and-crosses
or tic-tac-toe game has a problem space of some 255,000 states. Part of
the space of noughts-and-crosses (tic-tac-toe) is shown in Figure 1.1. In
this game, players alternately place Xs or Os in the 3 × 3 grid until one
player has an unbroken line of their symbols, or the grid is full (a draw).
If both adversaries play perfectly, a draw will always result … but this is
not immediately obvious.
People have very limited working memories to use in exploring
problem spaces without memory aids such as paper and pencil, and we
tend to use shortcut methods known as heuristics to narrow and focus
our searches. (Heuristics aid problem solving but do not guarantee solu-
tions.) A typical heuristic is that known as hill-climbing. With this ap-
proach the solver assesses all possible moves a limited depth ahead, say
going just one step ahead, choosing the move which is evaluated as
X
X
O
O X X
X O
X O
FIGURE 1.1 artial problem space for the game of noughts-and-crosses (or
P
t ic-tac-toe) after two moves.
looking to be nearer to the goal (getting warmer!). The process repeats

until the goal is reached or until a state is reached from which no fur-
ther progress is possible. Should such an impasse be reached the person
can back up and try alternative routes, avoiding the impasse state. The
hill-climbing method derives from the real world problem of finding a
peak when climbing a hill in a thick fog; in this situation, trying out one
step in each of the four main directions, North, South, East and West,
and picking the step that reaches the highest next point and repeating
the process will lead to a peak. It may be a false peak if you have started
up a foot-hill as against the main hill and so is not guaranteed to solve,
but it will often be useful.
Using a hill-climbing heuristic seems to underlie the difficulties that
participants have with a frequently studied laboratory problem known as
the Hobbits and Orcs problem (Thomas, 1974). The task is to get three
Hobbits and three Orcs across a river. The only way to cross is by a small
boat that can carry only one or two passengers at most. However, there
must be at least one passenger in the boat for it to cross, and most im-
portantly, you have to avoid Orcs outnumbering Hobbits on same side of
river – the Orcs will eat the Hobbits if they outnumber them (based on
Tolkien, 1966).
The complete problem space for the Hobbits and Orcs problem is
shown in Figure 1.2. The space of possible states in this problem is quite
small, comprising just 15 states, and the minimum path from starting
state to goal state is 11 moves long. However, typically participants take
around 22 moves rather than just 11. There is a strong tendency to get
involved in unnecessary loops and backtracks – going round in circles!
Some of the looping probably arises as a result of hill-climbing. For in-
stance, in State 5 of the problem space, going to State 4 looks attractive
as that has more creatures on the target side, but it puts the solver into a
loop. A further difficulty is often experienced at State 8, where the solver
has four out of six creatures on the target side. Difficulty here most likely
arises because people feel they are making good progress (the problem
seems to be 67% solved!) and are reluctant to make a detour, moving
away from the goal, which is the best move. Moving to State 9, where
only two creatures are on target side as against four on the target side,
looks very unattractive. That is, people typically are using a hill-climbing
heuristic, which causes difficulties at State 8 because at that state, they have
to detour and go further from the goal (from only two more to move,
to four more to move) in order to progress, and that goes against a pure
hill-climbing strategy.
2.HHH OO BOAT O
1. Start
BOAT
HHH
OOO
3. HHH O BOAT OO
4. HH OO BOAT H O
5. BOAT HHH OO O
6. HHH BOAT OOO
7. BOAT HHH OO
O
8. H O BOAT HH OO
9. BOAT HH H O
OO
10. OO BOAT HHH O
11. BOAT HHH

OOO
12. O BOAT HHH OO
13. BOAT H HH OO
O
14. OO BOAT HHH O
15. Goal BOAT HHH OOO
FIGURE 1.2 Problem space for Hobbits and Orcs.

Problem reduction and means-ends analysis

In addition to forward search of a problem space, from the starting state
onwards, using limited look-ahead and hill-climbing, well-defined prob-
lems can often be tackled by problem reduction, also known as means-ends
analysis or sub-goaling. This approach involves breaking the overall prob-
lem into smaller independent sub-problems and if need be dividing the
sub-problems into sub-sub-problems, and so on, until a sub-sub-…-sub-
problem is reached that can be solved in a single step. A real life example
would be making travel plans, say to travel from London to New York.
The overall goal is to reduce a long distance. That can be tackled by means
of a plane or a boat. Say Plane is chosen; there is now a sub-problem of
“getting on board a plane to use it”. This requires solving a “ticket getting
sub-sub-problem” and a “getting to the airport sub-sub-problem”. The
airport sub-sub-problem could be solved by catching a train to the air-
port. That, in turn, raises the sub-sub-sub-problem of getting to the train
station, which may be solved by walking, in which case that action can be
carried out. Once at the station, the train can be caught, and then at the
airport, the plane can be accessed.
This problem reduction approach is widely used in real life and has been
shown in laboratory studies of artificial tasks such as the Tower of Hanoi.
This task involves moving a tower of disks from the leftmost peg to the
rightmost peg with a middle peg available. Discs can only be moved one at
a time, and a larger disc cannot be put on top of a smaller disc. The number
of moves required grows quickly with the number of discs (N) as 2N − 1.
So the small three disc example shown in Figure 1.3 needs 7 moves. A five-
disc version would require 31 moves, a six-disc version 63 moves and so on.
3 DISKS
(1)
A B C A B C
(2) (3) (4)
A B C A B C A B C
(5) (6) (7)
A B C A B C A B C
FIGURE 1.3 Three disc Tower of Hanoi problem reduction graph.

To make the problem manageable, people generally come to apply

problem reduction and first tackle the “N-1 problem” of clearing the top
of the largest disc by moving the N-1 discs on top of it to the middle peg.
That generates an “N-2 sub-problem” of clearing the second largest disc so
that it can go on the middle peg and so on.
Overall, the routine methods of forward search in a problem space or
problem reduction can work well if the problem representation is appro-
priate, which will usually be the case for non-insight tasks. But when the
problem representation is not helpful for solving, as with insight tasks, what
solving processes might be used?
Solving insight problems: re-structuring

The Gestalt psychologists in the 1920s regarded problem solving as very
much like perceiving a new pattern in an ambiguous picture (e.g. the
Faces-Vases in Figure 1.4) or seeing a structure in a previously unstruc-
tured collection of blobs (Figure 1.5).
The Gestalt approach to problem solving led to a strong focus on prob-
lem re-structuring and insight – which in their view is a re-structuring that
gives a sudden understanding of how to solve the problem. They emphasised
not just sudden solution, which might arise by pure trial-and-error explo-
ration of possible moves, but understanding of why the solution worked.
A dramatic real life example of insight problem solving with re-structuring
in a life or death situation is given by the following story (Lehrer, 2008).
On August 5, 1949, 15 forest firefighters parachuted into the steep sided
Mann Gulch in Montana, USA. After a short time, the wind changed,
and suddenly the men were almost surrounded by rapidly advancing fires.
They began to flee up the dry grass covered slope to the ridge and safety.
However, very soon it became clear that they could not outrun the flames.
Figure 1.4 Reversible Face-Vases picture (Rubin, 1915).

FIGURE 1.5 an you re-structure the blobs to see a meaningful image? ( James,
C
1965).
What to do? The lead firefighter, Wagner (“Wag”) Dodge, suddenly real-
ised a solution. He lit a fire in the grass in front of him and let it burn up the
slope, driven by the prevailing wind. He then lay down in the burned-out
area, covered himself with his coat and waited for the main fire to go past
around the perimeter of the burned out area that he had created. Dodge
tried to get his men to join him, but none did. As a result Dodge survived,
but 13 of the other 14 crew did not. Dodge’s solution required a major
re-structuring of the problem from one of moving to a space safe from fire
by fleeing to creating a safe space – by using fire to escape from fire!
Less dramatically, but using a realistic task, Karl Duncker explored in-
sights while solving the X-ray problem (1945) in a laboratory setting. Par-
ticipants were told that a medical case has a life-threatening tumour that
cannot be operated on (see Figure 1.6). Although X-rays can destroy the
tumour, X-rays strong enough to destroy the tumour will also destroy
healthy tissue. Participants thought out loud while working on the task of
destroying the tumour without destroying healthy tissue, and the resulting
think-aloud records were analysed. The typical insight solution, focusses a
number of weak rays on the tumour.
• Karl Duncker : X-ray problem (1945)

• Inoperable tumour;
• X-rays can destroy tumour;
• Sufficient quantity will destroy healthy tissue;
FIGURE 1.6 Possible solution to Duncker’s X-ray problem.

FIGURE 1.7 Typical structuring and re-structuring during attempts at X-ray problem.
The “Insight” solution to the X-ray task was generally not immediately
apparent, and typically the problem was solved only after a number of
approaches had been tried. From the think-aloud records it emerged that
solvers structured and re-structured the problem repeatedly, e.g. by trying
approaches that protected healthy tissue, bypassed healthy tissue, delayed
the effect of rays or used weak rays that converged on the tumour.
The typical pattern of re-structurings is indicated in Figure 1.7.
Barriers to insight: set

A number of factors can delay or prevent insight, and a major factor is
known as set. Set is the tendency to solve problems in one particular way,
using a single inflexible approach. In other words when you suffer from set,
your thinking is stuck in a rut.
The nine-dot problem is a famous example of set. The task is to connect
the nine dots with four connected straight lines without lifting your pencil
from the page as you draw (see Figure 1.8).
Very few people solve the nine-dot problem within a reasonable time,
say 20 minutes, when first presented with it. There is a very strong set to
stay within the square shape, although that was not a restriction stated in
the instructions. However, the problem can only be solved by going outside
the square. One must literally think outside the box to solve this problem.
As well as layout, as in the nine-dot problem, affecting set, training
can induce strong sets. The classic example of training induced set is
provided by Luchin’s Water Jar Problem (1942). Participants are to show
how to obtain desired amounts of water, given an unlimited source
and three jars of different capacities. The first five problems can only
FIGURE 1.8 ine-dot problem. Connect the nine dots by four straight lines
N
without raising pen from surface.
be solved by filling jar B, using jar C twice and jar A once to draw off
excess water, i.e. following the formula B−2C−A. People persisted in
solving problem numbers 6 and 7 in the same way – missing much eas-
ier solutions that could have been used (A−C, A+C) in these problems.
If participants were only given the short solution problems 6 and 7, they
did not miss the easy solutions. Overall, the training series 1–5 clearly
induced a strong set effect when people came to the easy problems,
leading them to apply long inefficient methods where much shorter and
simpler solutions were available.
Further barriers to insight: functional fixity

A second type of barrier to insight is known as functional fixity and is a
tendency to use objects and concepts only in their common ways. Maier’s
(1931) two-string problem illustrates this tendency. The problem is to find
a way to hold on to the two strings hanging from the ceiling at the same
time using a set of common objects, such as brushes, screwdriver and ham-
mer. To solve, the participant has to use some of these objects in an unusual
way, viz. as weights to swing the ropes like pendulums.
A second example of functional fixity arises in Duncker’s (1945) candle
problem. The task is to find a way to fix a candle to a door so that the
candle will burn securely. The materials given are a box of tacks, candles
and matches. The solution is to empty the box of tacks, tack the tray of the
box to the door to use it as a platform, then light the candle and use wax
drippings to set the candle standing securely in the box tray.
Duncker reported on the basis of a small study that the task became
significantly easier if the box was presented empty. A larger study by
Adamson and Taylor (1954), with a Control group (n = 28) given the
Box empty and an Experimental Group (n = 29) given the box as a
container, replicated Duncker’s finding, with 86% of the Empty Box
group solving as against 41% of the Box Full group solving (p < 0.001
on Chi-Square test).
Comparing insight vs non-insight problems

In non-insight problems, solutions can be reached by searching forward
from the starting state or by splitting the overall problem into sub-problems
and those sub-problems into sub-sub-problems (i.e. problem reduction or
means-ends analysis). Some researchers have asked, “Are insight problems
solved in demonstrably different ways to non-insight problems?” The
estalt view is that YES, insight problems are special in that they require
G
restructuring and sudden understanding (insight) which are not involved
in non-insight tasks. This is the special process view of insight problem solv-
ing. However, Weisberg (2006) countered the Gestalt view and argued
that insight problem solving is not actually special but arises from nor-
mal processes of search and problem analysis without any need for special
or unusual processes. This is sometimes referred to as the business-as-usual
view of insight problem solving.
Metcalfe and Weibe (1987) carried out a relevant study comparing
self-reported feelings of warmth or closeness to solution as participants
worked through insight as against non-insight problems. The results in-
dicated that participants in non-insight (also known as “incremental” or
“routine”) problems reported steady increases in feeling warm (i.e. near
solution) as they worked on the task leading up to solution (see Figure 1.9).
In contrast, participants solving insight problems reported no changes in
warmth until just before reporting solution. This is the pattern that the
Gestalt approach, with its claim that insight solving involves a special pro-
cess, would expect.
Warmth ratings leading to solution

8
5
Modal Warmth
4
Incremental
3 Insight
0
-60 -45 -30 -15 0
Seconds before solution
FIGURE 1.9 armth ratings before solutions on insight and incremental prob-
W
lems (after Metcalfe and Weibe, 1987).
In a further study on this question, Jung-Beeman et al. (2004) used

Remote Associates Test (RAT) items with functional Magnetic Res-
onance Imaging (f MRI) to measure activity in different brain regions
during solving. In the RAT task participants are given problems as
follows:
What word links “boot”, “summer” and “ground”? (Answer: “camp”).
Jung-Beeman et al. (2004) proposed two broad ways to solve such RAT
items. One way is by systematically searching associations to each word
until an associate is found that links to all three words. So, one might
try associations to “boot” first, retrieve “shoe” and “lace”, and find
that those words did not link to “summer” or “ground”. Eventually
one might retrieve “camp” as an associate to “summer” and find it also
associates to “boot” and “ground”, thus being the solution. A second
way is by allowing the solution to emerge and come to mind without
systematic search (i.e. by an insight route). Participants had to report
whether each item was solved by a systematic search of associations or
by sudden insight (after being given the following criteria for insight:
(1) the solution came suddenly and completely (2) without being aware
of any searching through possibilities, and (3) with a strong sense that
it was correct).
The fMRI results showed significant differences in right hemisphere
activation between insight and non-insight solutions and so supported the
special process view of insight solving: that insight solutions involve differ-
ent processes from non-insight routine search solutions.
Representational change theory

A problem with the classic Gestalt approach to problem solving is that
the concepts involved are rather vague and ill-defined. What actually is
“restructuring”?, for example. Ohlsson (1992, 2011, 2018) has attempted
to rectify these problems in a neo-Gestaltist cognitive theory of problem
solving called the Representational Change Theory.
The theory proposes six main stages with associated processes and ex-
periences as indicated in Table 1.1.
In the first stage the problem’s starting state and goal state are en-
coded. In a typical insight problem, most participants will form an
encoding or representation which prevents or at least slows down the
solution; for example, in the “Lake” problem, most people will assume
TABLE 1.1 Stages of Insight
Stage Process Experience

1. Problem Encodes problem Grasps problem
perception
2. Problem solving Heuristic search/planning Does what comes to mind
3. Impasse Searches for new encoding Experiences blank mind
4. Restructuring Finds new encoding through: None
a. Elaboration
b. Re-encoding
c. Constraint relaxation
5. Partial insight Operator retrieval breaks “Sees” new option
impasse
6. Full insight Mental lookahead completes “Sees” entire solution
path to solution
Source: Ohlsson (1992).
that the water in the lake is in a liquid state. Problem solving begins by
trying out possible sequences of actions, mentally or overtly, depending
on the task. Ohlsson used the term “operator” here to refer to possible
actions that could change the problem state. If the problem has not
been structured appropriately, no appropriate actions or operators are
cued by its representation, and eventually progress halts; at this point,
the person experiences an “Impasse” and, in the model, a set of heuris-
tics called “switch when stuck” come into play. These heuristics evoke
elaboration, re-encoding and/or constraint relaxation, any of which
can lead to re-structuring.
In more detail, the three re-structuring processes are:
1. Elaboration: adding new information to the problem representation

(e.g. the presence of the box, as against its contents, may be initially
unnoticed in the candle problem, and noticing it would add to the
problem representation).
2. Constraint relaxation: assumed constraints on the problem rep-
resentation are removed (e.g. dropping the assumption in the nine-dot
problem that lines cannot go outside the square field of dots).
3. Re-encoding: a part of the problem is re-interpreted in a different
way (e.g. a pair of pliers are re-interpreted as a weight in the two-
string problem to overcome functional fixity; the water in the lake
problem is re-interpreted as frozen rather than liquid).
If all goes well, the re-structuring leads to retrieval of a useful operator or

action and to partial or complete insight into the solution path. In Ohlsson’s
original model (1992) these re-structuring processes are seen as unconscious
and occurring during the impasse. It could be that some solvers will con-
sciously adopt such processes, as Kaplan and Simon (1990) suggested, to search
deliberately for alternative representations. In a more recent version, Ohlsson
(2011) suggests an automatic process, whereby initial representations lose ac-
tivation with repeated failure, and this allows alternative representations to
gain activation (through re-distribution of activation) and become dominant.
Knoblich et al. (1999) investigated the role of the constraint relaxation part
of the Representational Change Theory and the role of re-encoding in the
form of Chunk Decomposition. Both Chunks and constraints can be rela-
tively tight (difficult to change) or loose (easy to change). Participants were
presented with match-stick algebra problems in which Roman number
equations are presented using match-sticks to make the characters, and one
match is to be moved to make each equation correct. For example
VII = II + III
It was expected that it would be fairly easy to decompose the “VII” chunk
and move one match from “VII” over to add to the “II” so that the solu-
tion is
VI = III + III
This relatively simple type of problem was labelled a Type A Problem.
A problem involving a tighter constraint (Type B problem) is
IV = IV + IV
In this it was expected that it would be difficult to decompose the “+” and
change it to “=”, with the solution
IV = IV = IV
Knoblich et al. argued that our experience with arithmetic means that we
find it easier to break the constraint on changing a value (such as VII) in an
equation than to change an operator (like +) or arbitrarily move the equals
sign in an equation. Therefore constraint relaxation predicts that people
should be able to solve the first kind of problem (Type A) more easily than
the second (Type B). Results in Figure 1.10 matched the predictions of
Ohlsson’s Representational Change Theory. Within 2 minutes 95% had
solved Type A problems, but only around 40% solved Type B problems in
the same time (see Figure 1.10).
Cumulative % solved.
Type A : VI = VII + I
Type B : IV = III - I
100
90
80
70
60
% solution
50
40
30
20
Type A
10
Type B
0
1 min 2 min 3 min 4 min 5 min
FIGURE 1.10 K noblich et al. (1999) results for loose (Type A) and tight con-
straint (Type B) problems.
Working memory, insight and non-insight

problem solving
Insight processes as envisaged in the Representational Change Theory are
assumed to operate at an unconscious level and so would not load working
memory (Baddeley, 2012). Working memory is seen as a flexible short term
store for information held temporarily during processing and, although
generally quite limited in capacity, does show individual variation. Some
support for the view that insight processes do not load working mem-
ory comes from individual difference studies examining correlations be-
tween working memory measures and performance on insight as against
non-insight tasks. If insight solving processes do not load working mem-
ory then we would expect lower correlations between working memory
and performance on insight than on non-insight tasks (which it is agreed
generally do load working memory). Gilhooly and Webb (2018) reviewed
this literature and on the basis of eight individual difference studies with
a combined N of 741 found a small (around 0.10) but consistent average
difference between the key correlations in the direction predicted by the
special process hypothesis. Another approach is to examine the effects of

impairing working memory on solving insight as against non-insight prob-
lems. If insight does not involve working memory, such manipulations
should have little impact on insight tasks. In one such manipulation study
Jarosz et al. (2012) reported that alcohol consumption, presumed to impair
working memory, actually facilitated performance in RAT problems and
raised the rate of self-reported insight solutions. Similarly, Reverberi et al.
(2005) surprisingly found that 35 patients with focal damage to the lateral
frontal cortex (implicated in working memory function) solved difficult
match-stick arithmetic problems at a significantly higher rate (82%) than
23 matched controls (43%). Overall, there is evidence that working mem-
ory has a reduced role in insight as compared to non-insight problems.
Impasse → insight sequence: necessary or not?

Weisberg (2015, 2018) has contested some aspects of the neo-Gestalt
view, and in particular the idea that there is an inevitable “impasse →
insight” sequencing of processes. He argued that multiple paths to
re-structuring are possible, including paths generated by conscious ana-
lytic processes as well as by automatic routes. Fleck and Weisberg (2004)
analysed think-aloud records from participants attempting insight tasks.
They estimated that relatively few (6%) showed the “impasse to insight”
sequence assumed in the neo-Gestalt approach. Sudden re-structuring
sometimes occurred without a preceding impasse, and re-structuring
was sometimes arrived at analytically by re-examining the problem
statements. Similarly, Cranford and Moss (2012) took think-aloud re-
cords, while participants tackled RAT type problems, which – as noted
in Jung-Beeman et al. (2004) – can be solved either with sudden in-
sight or through deliberate searching through item associations. They
found insight (or “Aha!”) solutions often occurred without a preceding
impasse.
Generic Parts Technique

Explicit re-encoding has been proposed by McCaffrey (2012) as an effec-
tive means of overcoming functional fixity in his Generic Parts Technique
(GPT) to aid problem-solving. This technique seeks to overcome func-
tional fixity by having participants explicitly list features of problem mate-
rials, which leads to noticing of obscure features and using obscure features
as a common aspect of innovative solutions.
CANDLE
WICK WAX
STRING ONLY WIRE CORE SCENTED UNSCENTED
LEAD COPPER
FIGURE 1.11 Generic parts diagram breaking a candle into components.
For example consider the two rings problem, in which the goal is
to fasten two heavy steel rings using only a long candle, a match and a
2-inch cube of steel. A control group tackles the problem in the normal
way. A GPT group is instructed to describe the objects in the problem
in terms of parts and parts of parts, and to form a generic-parts diagram
which makes explicit the properties of the objects and their component
parts, as in Figure 1.11.
McCaffrey (2012) reported very marked benefits for the GPT method
(c. 80% solution rates vs 50% in controls) over eight insight problems, p < 0.001.
Insight processes: conclusions

Overall, it seems there is evidence in favour of re-structuring arising through
unconscious, automatic processes which do not load working memory, and
this is indeed a possible route to solving insight problems. In other words,
there is support for the view that special processes can be involved in insight
problem solving, as suggested by the original Gestalt psychologists and by
the neo-Gestalt Representational Change Theory. However, we have to
bear in mind the caveat that other, analytic, routes to re-structuring solutions
are also possible, even for the classic insight problems, and that r e-structuring
can arise through conscious as well as unconscious processing.
Creative problems
Creative problems require the production of new approaches and usually
many possible new solutions before a good or acceptable solution is found.
These problems can also often be classed as “divergent” (many possible

solutions) as against “convergent” problems, for which there is only one
acceptable solution.
In researching how new solutions are reached in creative problem solv-
ing, “new” solutions and approaches are taken as those novel to the solver
(i.e. psychologically novel) and may or may not be historically novel (Boden,
2004), i.e. never before produced in world history. Many years ago, Ogburn
and Thomas (1922) noted in a paper entitled “Are inventions inevitable?”
that, in technological and scientific developments, it is quite common
for two or more researchers to solve the same problems completely inde-
pendently of each other, and often within a short time of each other. Such
events are known as “multiple inventions”. They found 148 examples of
multiple inventions, most of which took place within five years of each
other. The electric battery, the telegraph, the steam engine, artificial re-
frigeration and many other cases of multiple inventions have been thor-
oughly documented ( Johnson, 2015, pp. 58–59). Independent thinkers
who solve the same problem can all be said to have been personally creative
on reaching the solution, although only the first to solve would have been
historically creative.
Defining “creativity” is notoriously difficult. Let us start with cre-
ative products. The most common definition of a creative product,
sometimes known as “the standard definition”, is “Creativity requires
both originality and effectiveness” (Runco & Jaeger, 2012, p. 92). Thus
a creative product has to be original (to the creator) and useful or val-
uable in some way. Originality or novelty is not enough in itself for a
product to have creative status. I or anyone could generate sentences at
random following grammatical rules, such as responding to the prob-
lem of how to start a broken down car by saying “Pink grass must
integrate centrally in a contrarian judgment of disembodied solidity”.
Such a sentence is historically novel but of no use or value for solving
the broken down car or any other problem (except that of producing an
example of low value originality!).
An earlier definition by Stein (1953) was influential. He wrote:
The creative work is a novel work that is acceptable or tenable or

useful or satisfying by a group in some point in time…By novel
I mean that the creative product did not exist previously in pre-
cisely the same form…The extent to which a work is novel de-
pends on the extent to which it deviates from the traditional or
the status quo.
Stein’s remarks highlight that value is a judgement by a group at a point in

time and that novelty can also be a matter of judgement. Just how different
does a product have to be from available products to be regarded as original?
Simonton (2012, 2018) proposed a three criterion definition that closely
corresponds to that used by the United States Patent Office, viz. that an
invention deserving a new patent must be new, useful and non-obvious.
Weisberg (2006) disagrees with the usual definition (“Novel and Useful/
Valuable”) and suggests that a creative product should have the three features
of being Novel, Intentional and Meeting a Goal. This stresses the subjective
aspects of being intentional rather than accidental and of meeting a goal held
by the person who produces the product. This definition overcomes possible
changes in the “creative” status of a product whenever value judgements
shift, as often happens in the case of artistic products. For example, in the
1890s the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh were, in objective terms, worth-
less. He sold almost no paintings in his lifetime. However, within a century
his work went from virtually worthless to priceless and now ranks among
the most expensive art money can buy. The process of producing a painting
from conception to execution that Van Gogh went through remains the
same no matter the external value placed on his work by others, and it is
those production processes that research on creativity seeks to uncover.
In the sciences and technology, matters are usually less controversial,
although a new scientific theory may be derided when it is first produced
(i.e. seen to be of no value) but later accepted as very useful. Again, the
underlying process of production does not change. Weisberg’s definition
thus has value in not risking fluctuation in the status of a product as creative
or not when external opinion changes. For his definition, the important
aspect is whether the product met the creative person’s own goals rather
than how it was received by external judges or the market.
In discussing creativity it is also useful to distinguish between small “c”
creativity and big “C” Creativity. Small “c” creativity is what we find in the
everyday production of novel and useful solutions to minor problems. We
are all creative in this small-c sense every time we speak a novel and useful
sentence. Other everyday examples of novel-to-the-solver and useful prob-
lem solving would be combining ingredients from the fridge that we have
not previously put together to make a quick stir-fry meal, using chewing
gum to secure a loose key on a laptop keyboard or using a handheld vacuum
cleaner to remove a cloud of small flies that have settled on a ceiling. Small
“c” creativity is the subject of typical laboratory studies and psychometric
tests in which, for example, participants generate novel uses for familiar
objects or seek to combine familiar shapes into interesting new structures.
Big “C” Creativity refers to major productions of scientific, technological,

social or artistic importance. Examples of big “C” Creativity products would
include Darwin’s theory of evolution, the invention of the printing press and
Picasso’s Guernica painting. Big “C” Creativity is much harder to investigate
than small “c” creativity as it cannot be captured in small scale laboratory
studies, and relevant research tends to look at biographical, historical and
productivity metrics data from real life examples. However, it is assumed that
there will be some process overlap between Big “C” and small “c” creativity.
Creative problem solving: divergent thinking

Creative problems require the production of at least one novel solution and
often many more than one in divergent tasks for which there is no known
single best solution but rather an indefinite range of possibilities. A real life
example of a divergent problem would be generating ideas for an advertis-
ing campaign. How do people tackle such problems?
A small scale laboratory task that can tap small “c” creativity and serve
as a way of measuring creative ability is the Alternative Uses Task, in which
participants are asked to produce as many different uses as they can think
of which are different from the normal use for a number of common ob-
jects, such as bricks, coat hangers and shoes. Typically there is a time limit
per item. To gain insight into the processes involved, Gilhooly et al. (2007)
took thinking aloud records from a study of 40 participants in an Alterna-
tive Uses task. Analyses of the thinking aloud records indicated that initial
responses were based on retrieval from long-term memory of pre-known
uses, which had been experienced directly or indirectly through reading,
TV, movies, hearsay or other vicarious routes. This route was labelled as a
memory strategy which drew on participants’ episodic memories about the
objects. Responses based on episodic memories would usually be judged by
independent judges as relatively common and uncreative. Later responses in
the sequences tended to be judged more creative and were generated from
a small number of strategies, which drew on semantic memory about the
objects. One such useful strategy was to imagine disassembling the object
(e.g. shoe) into components (e.g. shoelace, sole, tongue) and generating uses
for the components (similar to McCaffrey’s (2012) GPT for overcoming
functional fixity, discussed previously). Another was to consider features
of the objects (e.g. “a brick is heavy”) and generate uses from each feature
(“What can heavy things be used for? Holding down light objects, such as
papers, so a paper weight”). A third was to scan broad use possibilities. So,
for each object, could it be used as Furniture, Transport, Weapon, etc.?
In a second study (Gilhooly et al., 2007), 103 participants were asked to

categorise each of their responses as novel for them, i.e. produced for the first
time during the task, or as pre-known, whether from direct or vicarious ex-
perience. It was found that executive function measures were particularly re-
lated to the production of subjectively “new” responses but not to subjectively
“old” responses. It was concluded that conscious, executively loading strate-
gies, such as Disassembly, played a role in creative performance in this task.
Beaty and Silvia (2012) examined the relationship between executive
functioning capacity and the typical serial position curve of creativity in al-
ternative uses task responses. Generally, as Gilhooly et al. (2007) had reported,
later responses were assessed as more creative than earlier responses, and this
probably reflects the early use of the episodic memory strategy, initially fol-
lowed when that becomes unproductive by the more demanding semantic
memory strategies. Beaty and Sylvia (2012) found that people who scored
more highly on fluid intelligence tests and so could be taken to be high in ex-
ecutive functioning ability showed a smaller serial position effect in that they
more quickly adopt effective novelty generating strategies as the task requires.
A second laboratory size, small “c” creativity task which has been studied
is that of mental synthesis, sometimes known as “creative synthesis” or “visual
synthesis”. The basic task is given three shapes, combine them to make an
“interesting object” (Finke et al., 1992). The task is deliberately open-ended
and is based on the assumption that much creative work involves explora-
tion without any very specific goal or sub-goal in mind. Figure 1.12 gives an
indication of the basic objects to be combined and a possible response.
Figure 1.12 isual Synthesis task. Elements and a possible synthesis – a plant
V
pot on a trolley (after Finke, 1990).
Finke et al. (1992) examined the effect of giving a more specific goal,
such as produce a combination that would be useful as a mode of transport
or as furniture, or gave the target category after the combination object was
produced. It was found that giving the target category After led to more
highly rated “Creative” responses (33%) than giving the category Before the
object combination was created (22%). The item in Figure 1.12 might, for
instance, be a creative chair (furniture use) in a public space where people
could sit without facing each other.
Incubation?
In the case of creative and insight problem solving it has frequently been
argued that stopping conscious work on such problems for a period of time
(known as an “incubation” period) can help in the production of novel
solutions. It is suggested that solution ideas might occur spontaneously
while not focussing on the problem (“inspiration”) or alternatively very
quickly when the previously unsolved problem is attended to again. In the
next chapter, I will discuss the historical origins of the idea of incubation
in the psychology of thinking.
2
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO
THE “INCUBATION” CONCEPT
Personal accounts
Many leading scientists, inventors and artists have volunteered often quite
detailed accounts of their experiences in producing creative work. Some
interesting regularities have emerged from these accounts, including fre-
quent references to incubation, although, as we shall discuss, such accounts
do need to be treated with caution.
William James (1880) gave an early, if undetailed and generalised, de-
scription of an incubation experience.
When walking along the street, thinking of the blue sky or the fine
spring weather…I may suddenly catch an intuition of the solution of
a long unsolved problem, which at that moment was very far from
my thoughts.
Herman Helmholtz was a leading scientist in the nineteenth century who

contributed to physics, neurology and psychology. He gave the following
account at a 70th birthday dinner in his honour (Helmholtz, 1896).
So far as my experience goes, happy thoughts never came to a fa-

tigued brain and never at the writing desk.
It was always necessary, first of all, that I should have turned my prob-
lem over on all sides to such an extent that I had all its angles and com-
plexities in my head and could run through them freely without writing.
26 Historical background to “incubation”
To bring the matter to that point is usually impossible without

long preliminary labour.
Then after the fatigue resulting from that labour has passed away,
there must come an hour of complete physical freshness and quiet
well being, before the good ideas arrived…they especially liked to
make their appearance while I was taking an easy walk over wooded
hills in sunny weather.
In this account Helmholtz reports a similar pattern to that noted later by

Poincaré of prolonged conscious work in which the solver becomes very
familiar with the problem followed by a period away from the task inter-
rupted by spontaneous inspirations.
Henri Poincaré (1908, 1910) was a leading French mathematician in the
nineteenth and early twentieth century, and he provided influential ac-
counts of a series of interlinked creative episodes that underlay his first
major published work on Fuchsian functions. As Poincaré remarks, these
accounts involved theorems having “barbarous” names which will be
meaningless to most readers (e.g. Theta-Fuchsian Series; indeterminate
ternary quadratic forms), but the mathematical meaning of the problems
is fortunately not relevant to understanding the solving processes he de-
scribes. The following extracts are from the translation by G. B. Halstead
published in Poincaré (1910) and also as Ch. III, Book II, of Science and
Method in The Foundations of Science (Poincaré, 1913). There are two major
translations of Poincaré’s accounts into English and as these have both been
used at different times by different authors I briefly outline the position
regarding the translations in Box 2.1.
Box 2.1 Which Poincaré? A note on translations
Poincaré gave an account of his experiences of creative work and

an extended theoretical discussion, initially in a talk (“L’invention
mathématique”) of 1908, given to the Psychological Society of Paris at
the Institut Général Psychologique. This talk was soon afterwards pub-
lished in French in 1908 in a journal aimed at mathematics educators,
L’Enseignement Mathématique. An English translation was published in
1910 in The Monist journal and that translation later appeared in a
book of 1913, The Foundations of Science, New York: Science Press. The
1910 translation was by George B. Halstead and is the one I have used
Historical background to “incubation” 27
as a default source, largely because it is readily available electronically

as a paper in The Monist and so can easily be consulted by any inter-
ested parties. There is also another translation into English by Francis
Maitland, in 1914, which appears in the book Science and Method,
New York: Dover. I mention the existence of these two translations,
both of which have been used by different secondary writers, such as
Weisberg (2006 – uses Halstead), Sadler-Smith (2015 – uses Halstead),
Wallas (1926 – uses Maitland), Campbell (1960 – uses Halstead), my-
self (e.g. Gilhooly, 1996, 2016 – uses Halstead), Corazza and Lubart
(2019 – use Maitland) and many others, because the two translations
differ occasionally and sometimes in ways that could be significant.
For example, the translators differ on the very title of the paper!
The title in French was “L’invention mathématique”; Halstead gives the
title in English as “Mathematical creation” while Maitland preferred
“Mathematical discovery”. The terms “discovery” and “creation” are
similar but not identical in meaning. If we say creative work is a mat-
ter of discovery, that suggests the novel products are out there, like a
new continent, awaiting discovery, while creation suggests a process
of internal generation. I suggest that discovery is more appropriate for
sciences in which there are hard facts awaiting discovery, e.g. DNA has
the structure it has, and creation is more appropriate for the arts and
the formal sciences, such as mathematics, in which possible worlds
can be generated. As Poincaré was first and foremost a mathematician,
the Halstead translation of the paper title as “Mathematical Creation”
is, I suggest, probably closer to Poincaré’s intentions.
Poincaré’s accounts cover five separate episodes from his early work as
a researcher which were important for his later work and are given in the
following as Episodes A–E.
Episode A. Establishing Fuchsian functions

For 15 days I strove to prove that there could not be any functions like
those I have since called the Fuchsian Functions…
Every day I seated myself at my work table ~ stayed an hour or
two, tried a great number of combinations and reached no results.
One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and
could not sleep.
Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so

to speak, making stable combination.
By the next morning I had established the existence of a class of
Fuchsian Functions, those which come from the hypergeometric se-
ries; I had only to write out the results, which took but a few hours.
This Episode begins with extended conscious attempts, to prove there

could not be any Fuchsian functions. Trying to prove a negative is a com-
mon approach in mathematics, known as “Reductio ad Absurdum” – on this
approach, assume that what you seek to prove is false and if that assumption
leads to contradictions, then what you seek to prove must be true!
A pre-sleep, “hypnagogic”, state, possibly exacerbated by caffeine, seemed
to induce very free searching through possible mathematical combinations
that eventually led to a basis for a solution. Poincaré goes on to surmise that
in this Episode of thinking in an unusual hypnagogic state, he had become
aware of what is normally unconscious when a problem is set aside in incu-
bation. That is, the processes of quasi-random combination of mathemat-
ical concepts he experienced in a hypnagogic state provided, he argued, a
model for what is normally unconscious during incubation.
Episode B. Theta Fuchsian series

Then I wanted to represent these functions by the quotient of two
series; this idea was perfectly conscious and deliberate, the analogy
with elliptic functions guided me. I asked myself what properties
these series must have if they existed, and I succeeded without diffi-
culty in forming the series I have called theta-Fuchsian.
In this Episode, the goal of using the quotient of two series is stated and
conscious work finds the solution with no incubation reported. This Epi-
sode represents routine conscious problem solving.
Episode C. The “bus” inspiration: a connection is

realised with non-Euclidean geometry
Just at this time I left Caen, where I was then living, to go on a ge-
ological excursion under the auspices of the school of mines. The
changes of travel made me forget my mathematical work. Having
reached Coutances, we entered an omnibus to go some place or
other. At the moment when I put my foot on the step the idea came
to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have

paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used to define the
Fuchsian functions were identical to those of Non-Euclidean geom-
etry. I did not verify the idea: I should not have had time, as, upon
taking my seat in the omnibus, I went on with a conversation already
commenced, but I felt a perfect certainty. On my return to Caen, for
conscience’s sake I verified the result at my leisure.
In this Episode, mathematical work had been set aside, and it seems that
unconscious processes delivered a realisation of an identity or equivalence
between concepts regarding Fuchsian functions and concepts regarding
non-Euclidean geometry; furthermore, this identity had not been consciously
sought. Poincaré knew of both concepts but had not hitherto made the con-
nection or sought the connection between them. (This realisation of identity
could be regarded as a case of inner “Serendipity” when two concepts have
accidentally become co-activated and a link between them becomes also
activated.) The “bus” incident in this Episode occurred in February 1881,
when Poincaré was 26 years old, a recent doctoral graduate and a new lecturer
at the Faculté des Sciences at Caen. The translator Halstead (1913, pp. ix–x)
comments that this one realisation while stepping on board a bus opened up
“a new and immense perspective” which shaped much of Poincaré’s future
research applying non-Euclidean geometry to cosmology.
Episode D. “On the beach” inspiration: another

unexpected connection
Then I turned my attention to the study of some arithmetic questions
apparently without much success and without a suspicion of any con-
nection with my preceding researches, Disgusted with my failure, I
went to spend a few days at the seaside, and thought of something else.
One morning, walking on the bluff, the idea came to me, with just
the same characteristics of brevity, suddenness and immediate cer-
tainty, that the arithmetic transformations of indeterminate ternary
quadratic forms were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry.
In this Episode, there is a clear sequence of conscious work, leading to an

impasse, after which the problem is set aside and after a few days, an inspi-
ration occurs – again concerning a previously unnoticed connection between
already known concepts in non-Euclidean geometry and in another field –
as in the previous Episode C.
Episode E. More Fuchsian functions: the

“Boulevard” inspiration
Returned to Caen, I meditated on this result and deduced the con-
sequences. The example of quadratic forms showed me that there
were Fuchsian groups other than those corresponding to the hy-
pergeometric series; I saw that I could apply to them the theory of
theta-Fuchsian series and that consequently there existed Fuchsian
functions other than those from the hypergeometric series, the ones I
then knew. Naturally, I set myself to form all these functions. I made
a systematic attack upon them and carried all the outworks, one after
another. There was one however that still held out, whose fall would
involve that of the whole place. But all my efforts only served at first
the better to show me the difficulty, which indeed was something.
All this work was perfectly conscious.
Thereupon I left for Mont-Valerien, where I was to go through my
military service; so I was very differently occupied. One day, going
along the street, the solution of the difficulty which had stopped me
suddenly appeared to me. I did not try to go deep into it immediately,
and only after my service did I again take up the question. I had all
the elements and had only to arrange them and put them together. So
I wrote out my final memoir at a single stroke and without difficulty.
In this Episode, as in the preceding Episode D, following extended con-

scious attempts to reach a well-defined goal, an impasse was reached and
the problem was set aside. The solution idea then occurred spontaneously
after an unspecified period in which Poincaré had not worked on the prob-
lem and the idea was later consciously verified. In this account the nature
of the solution is not specified as being a realisation of a connection be-
tween previously unconnected domains or as some other useful idea.
Poincaré takes Episodes C, D and E as resulting from unconscious processes
which he labels “unconscious work” (le travail de l’inconscient). Interestingly,
Episodes C and D involve sudden recognition of a strong similarity (identity,
in fact) between previously known but previously unconnected concepts.
Episode A, involving a hypnagogic state, is taken by Poincaré as making
reportable the normally hidden form of unconscious work as a quasi-random,
constant combining and re-combining of ideas, until a useful new c ombination
is reached. These retrospections on his own experiences in tackling extremely
difficult mathematical problems formed the evidence base for Poincaré’s influ-
ential analysis of creative processes in mathematics.
More recently the acclaimed British novelist Martin Amis (2012) volunteered
the following report which stresses the benefits of setting a problem aside:
I’ve learned not to force inspiration when its not coming. Before
I’d smash my head against it all day. Now I walk away and read
something else. This allows for the subconscious to catch up. When
I return to my desk the problem tends to be fixed.
The Wallas model: background

In developing his often cited four-stage model, Graham Wallas (1926) built
on a number of sources, but particularly drew on Poincaré’s (1908) anal-
ysis of mathematical creative work. It is worth noting here that he used
the Maitland translation of 1914 when quoting from Poincaré, with one
curious exception. He gives the title of Poincaré’s paper, in English, as
“Mathematical Invention” rather than Maitland’s “Mathematical Discovery”.
Wallas seems to have simply translated the French “L’invention” in the
original title (“L’invention mathématique”), as the English “Invention” –
which is surely close to “Creation” as given in Halstead’s translation of the
title as “Mathematical Creation”, but “Invention” has an implication of be-
ing driven by practical needs, rather than by purely exploratory creativity
without any particular end in mind. This is appropriate, as Wallas’s book
The Art of Thought had a practical aim and was intended “to explore …
how far the knowledge accumulated by modern psychology can be made
useful for the improvement of the thought processes of a working thinker”
(Wallas, 1926, p. 5).
Wallas starts by considering the nature of natural untrained thought
and draws on the approaches and findings of that early era in the devel-
opment of modern psychology following Wundt’s foundation of the first
psychology laboratory in 1879. Wallas was concerned by what he saw as
the unfortunate influence of early behaviourism on the one hand and sim-
plistic “mechanistic” views of the mind as a single mechanism powered
by basic drives on the other hand. Rather he supported ideas of multiple
levels of consciousness with parallel streams of mental activity at varying
levels of consciousness, together with multiple motives being active at any
one time. In the terminology of his day, Wallas adopted a “Hormic” view
of the organism as goal-directed and purposive (“hormic” from Greek for
“impulse”). He distanced himself from the Freudian view that mental life
is totally determined by basic drives, such as sex, and allowed a role for
cognitive factors and motivations as well as basic impulses.
In analysing untrained natural thought he stressed the role of associa-

tion of ideas and argued that the “Art of Thought” attempts to modify the
natural course of idea association. He pointed out two broad introspective
methods for investigating thinking as a process of association of ideas. The
first method involves remembering a chain of associations – retrospecting – and
then examining the determinants of the chain. The second method in-
volves concurrent reporting – thinking aloud – during work on a problem and
then analysing the concurrent records.
The use of recall, as in retrospection, was historically the most com-
mon approach and can be found in writings by Aristotle as far back as
350 BC, who treated association as part of an analysis of memory (De
Memoria, II, 12). Aristotle asked why memory of one experience calls up
memory of another. He concluded that the sequencing of recalls of asso-
ciated experiences is sometimes because they had succeeded each other in
experience, and the earlier evokes the later (“bell” evokes “dinner”), and
sometimes because they were similar (“cup” evokes “mug”), contiguous in
place (“roof ” evokes “chimney”) or had a logical connection (“hot” evokes
its opposite, “cold”).
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, Ch. III, 1651)
also considered sequences of associations and divided them into two broad
types. He wrote:
This train of thoughts, or mental discourse, is of two sorts. The first

is unguided, without design, and inconstant…In which case the
thoughts are said to wander and seem impertinent [unrelated] one to
another, as in a dream…And yet, in this wild ranging of the mind,
a man may often perceive the way of it, and the dependence of one
thought upon another…the second is more constant, as being regu-
lated by some desire and design.
From desire, ariseth the thought of some means we have seen pro-
duce the like of that which we aim at; and from the thought of that,
the thought of means to that mean; and so continually, till we come
to some beginning within our own power. And because the end…
comes often to mind, in case our thoughts begin to wander, they are
quickly again reduced [redirected] into the way.
Here Hobbes pointed to undirected thinking, purely governed by asso-

ciations from one thought to the next in a “wild ranging of the mind”
and to more directed thought in which associative paths are strongly
influenced by current goals. He gave an early description of means-ends
analysis, or problem reduction, as a desire (an “end”) evokes a means and

if that means cannot be executed, a means by which it can be imple-
mented is evoked, and so on. So for example, for the end of retrieving
an item on a high shelf in a particular room, we may need the means of
a ladder; if the ladder is not available in the room, we now have the end
of getting a ladder and may think of the means of searching the garden
shed for a ladder.
Attempting to generate and record concurrent introspections during
thinking episodes, which the analyst then sought to understand, was a
more recent development, but had come into use by the early 1920s. Wallas
(1926, p. 65) believed that 50 years after his writing, i.e. by 1976, “…stu-
dents will have an ample supply of this type of observation before them”.
However, although the method of concurrent verbalisation (or thinking
aloud) has been better developed and used in recent years, such data are still
not amply available. Furthermore, there are many methodological issues
that need to be taken into account in using such data (Ericsson & Simon,
1984) and interpretation is not easy.
In his 1926 book, Wallas drew on introspections reported by the
Belgian educational psychologist J. Varendonck (1921) in his book,
Psychology of Day Dreams. Varendonck attempted to write down as soon
as possible the contents of many of his daydreams over a period of a
few years. An example, which is given later, concerns his worries about
arranging his doctoral examination, which was difficult in the cir-
cumstances of the First World War, due to the occupation of his native
Belgium by enemy forces:
Will the Minister consent to create a jury for me? I wonder whom
I shall ask to read my work, so that I may get some expert advice
before I submit it to the critical judgment of the jury…My friend C.
is not a specialist in this subject. Mr P. I don’t know well enough:
moreover (he is a neutral), he may be Germanophile, for he did not
reply to the letter I sent him and he seems to ignore me altogether.
Mr. B. Is too far off…Will Professor R. do it?…
This example shows a pattern or form which often occurred, i.e. what
Varendonck called the “dialogue form” in which successive possible solu-
tions present themselves and are met by various objections until a solution
occurs against which no convincing objection suggests itself. Although
many of Varendonck’s daydreams were experienced shortly before sleep (the
hypnogogic state), he maintained that these daydreams were broadly similar
to those that occurred during fully wakeful periods. Wallas points out how-
ever that when the daydreams continued into a very near sleep stage, more
irrational connections and bizarre imagery became more evident.
Wallas’s stages of control

Wallas (1926) built largely on the accounts by Helmholtz and Poincaré to
produce his extremely influential and well-known Four Stage model of cre-
ative thinking – Preparation, Incubation, Illumination and Verification –
in a chapter in The Art of Thought, entitled “Stages of Control”. This title
signals that he was not simply concerned to describe the usual stages of
creative problem solving but to indicate how the stages could be planned
for, controlled and facilitated.
In his model, Wallas (1926, p. 80) labelled the intermediate stage, in
which a problem is put aside and not consciously worked on, as the Incuba-
tion stage. It is notable that Poincaré did not use the term “Incubation” in
his 1908/1910 paper. In the original French version of his paper the word
“l’incubation” did not appear, although he reported examples of success-
ful incubation type periods from his own experience, such as solutions to
problems occurring while travelling by bus, at the seaside on holiday, or
walking down the street, despite not having consciously thought about
the problems concerned for some time. Nor did Helmholtz use the term
“incubation”. However, Poincaré and Helmholtz both gave accounts of
periods when a problem was set aside and not consciously considered, that
fitted Wallas’s description of incubation periods.
Thus, Wallas seems to have been the first to use the term “Incubation”
in the context of setting a problem aside. Presumably he was guided by
analogy with birds incubating eggs to allow the development of chicks
from embryos or with diseases incubating undetected in patients before
becoming manifest. These biological uses of the term “incubation” suggest
automatically unfolding processes that in themselves lead to complex com-
plete outcomes (such as a live chick or a full blown disease state). Thus, the
very term “incubation” itself may suggest a particular kind of explanation
of any effects of setting a problem aside in terms of an underlying automatic
solution process that if left undisturbed will deliver a solution.
Here, I will generally mean by “incubation” simply a period in which a
problem is not consciously worked on, without assuming any particular
processes taking place unconsciously during that period. From an etymo-
logical point of view, it is interesting that, in the ancient world “incuba-
tion”, which derives from Latin “in” (on) and “cubare” (to lie), was a ritual
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
London. Stapleton had for several years been a man about town; he
was a well-to-do bachelor with a flat in Sandringham Mansions,
Maida Vale, and a small place in the country, near Uckfield, whose
calling in life seemed to be the quest of pleasure and nothing else.
Certainly he had no profession, nor, apparently, had he need of one.
Wherever people belonging to le monde ou l’on s’amuse were to be
found gathered together, there you would meet “Louie” Stapleton,
dressed always in the height of fashion and ever ready to entertain
friends by inviting them to dine or lunch, taking them to the theater,
or even asking them to spend week-ends with him at his place, “The
Nest,” in Sussex.
A day or two after Froissart and Preston, Cora Hartsilver, and
Yootha Hagerston had spent the evening together at Cora’s house in
Park Crescent, Jessica Mervyn-Robertson, accompanied by
Stapleton and Archie La Planta and several other friends, sat in a
box at the Alhambra watching the Russian Ballet, then the
fashionable attraction.
It was the first night of Scheherezade, and the house was packed.
Beautiful women gorgeously gowned, and men immaculately
dressed crowded every box, and filled the stalls to overflowing. In
every direction diamonds and other precious gems sparkled, and as
the orchestra began the wonderful overture the audience, which had
been talking volubly in anticipation of the silence which they knew
must follow, became gradually hushed.
The ballet ended, and the usual buzz of conversation followed. So
worked up had the audience become by the terrible scenes of lust,
followed by carnage, that several women in the stalls were laughing
hysterically. An elderly man in the box adjoining Jessica’s, who
obviously came from the provinces, and was witnessing Russian
Ballet for the first time, could be heard expostulating in a north
country accent against “such shows being permitted in a civilized
land.”
“And look at the clothes they wear—or rather don’t wear!” he went
on, warming to his subject. “I maintain such shows should be put
down by law. If I had known it would be like this I should not have
brought you, my dear,” this to a faded woman, obviously his wife.
“What has become of the censor that a ballet like this is allowed?”
People in the theater exclaimed “Hush!” while in the boxes
adjacent there was much tittering. In spite of his protests, however,
he remained, and the next ballet apparently met with his approval.
Somebody knocked at the door of the box occupied by Mrs.
Mervyn-Robertson and her party, and La Planta got up to see who it
was.
After an exchange of whispers with the attendant, he went out
and shut the door.
When the second ballet ended, and he had not returned, Jessica
showed signs of uneasiness.
“What can have become of Archie?” she said to Stapleton, who
sat beside her. “Do you know who wanted him?”
“No. I am going out for a minute, so I will ask the attendant.”
But when he succeeded in finding the attendant, she told him that
the inquiry had been for Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson. The gentleman to
whom she had given the message had said he would attend to it,
and had gone into the foyer.
“Did he take his hat?” Stapleton asked.
“No, he came out just as he was.”
“Then he cannot have left the theater. If you should see him will
you tell him, please, that I have gone down to the foyer to find him?”
But La Planta was not in the foyer. Nor, apparently, was he
anywhere else in the theater. Asked if a gentleman without a hat had
gone out of the theater within the last half hour, the commissionaire
replied that he had been absent a little while, so would not like to
say.
La Planta had not returned to the box when Stapleton got back
there, nor did he return at all. Jessica, told by Stapleton that the
inquiry had been for her, looked at him oddly, but made no comment.
As usual, Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson—or as all her friends called her,
Jessica—entertained her theater guests at supper at her house in
Cavendish Square after the performance. Both she and Stapleton
expected that La Planta would put in an appearance there, but he
did not.
It was quite a big supper-party, for people kept arriving in cars
until past one o’clock, so that when at last it came to an end, the
guests grouped about the card tables in the room adjoining, playing
“chemmy” and other games, numbered over thirty.
“What can have become of him?” Jessica said to Stapleton in an
undertone as she drew him aside. “And without his hat, too. I can’t
imagine where he can have gone, or who it can have been who
inquired for me. Archie ought to have told me!”
“I have telephoned twice to the Albany, but can get no reply.”
“You wouldn’t, at this time of the night.”
“Why not? He has an extension to his man’s bedroom.”
“Then do ring again, Louie. I am anxious about him.”
This time Stapleton was more successful, for after two futile
attempts the operator got through, and a sleepy, rather irritated voice
asked huskily:
“Hello! hello! Who is that ringing?”
“It’s Mr. Stapleton, James. I am sorry to wake you up, but can you
tell me if Mr. La Planta has come in?”
“If you will please to hold on, sir,” the voice replied in a different
tone, “I will ascertain and let you know.”
For some minutes Stapleton waited with the receiver glued to his
ear. He was beginning to think the man had gone to sleep again,
when suddenly he heard him returning. He sounded as if he were
running.
“Are you there, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. La Planta is lying on his sofa, sir, fast asleep. I’ve called him
and shaken him, but he won’t wake up. The light in his room was full
on. He must have been drugged or something. He is breathing very
heavy, very heavy indeed, sir. I’m going to ring up the doctor.”
“No, don’t do that. I’ll come round at once and see him; the doctor
may not be wanted. Be ready to let me in as soon as I arrive.”
The card-players still grouped about the little tables were busy
with their games. In a small room beyond the drawing-room could be
heard the rattle of the little marble as it spun merrily round in the well
of the roulette, and a voice murmuring at intervals: “Faites vos jeux,”
and “Rien n’ va plus.”
Jessica came forward as she saw him approaching.
“Come into the hall,” he said in a low tone, “and I will tell you.”
In a few words he explained to her what had happened.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he ended. “I will go there now, and will ring
you up and report progress.”
Taxis were waiting in Cavendish Square, and within five minutes
he alighted at the Albany.
La Planta’s face was very pale. He lay with lips slightly parted,
breathing heavily. His eyelids were but half closed, and though
Stapleton drew one of them up, the sleeper did not awake.
“Obviously doped,” he said to James, who stood by with a
frightened look.
He bent over his friend until their faces were very close.
“And I think I know with what,” he added, thinking aloud. “You
have no idea, James, how long he had been in?”
“None at all, sir. I didn’t know he was in until you rang me up.”
“There is no need to send for a doctor,” Stapleton said, as he
straightened himself. “It is nothing dangerous. His pulse is strong,
and he will sleep off the effects of the drug. By the way, did anybody
call to see him, or ring him up, while he was out this evening?”
“Nobody called, sir, but a lady rang him up.”
“A lady? At about what time?”
The man thought for a moment.
“As near as may be, I should say it was nine o’clock, sir.”
“Anybody you know? Did she give any name?”
“No, sir. It was not a voice I recognized.”
“Leave any message?”
“No, sir. Just asked where Mr. La Planta was, and I told her at the
Alhambra. Then she asked who was with him, and I said you and
Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson I knew for certain, and I said I fancied there
were others. Then she said ‘Thank you’ and rang off, sir.”
Suddenly a thought struck Stapleton, and he slipped his hand into
his friend’s pockets. But apparently nothing was missing. From the
breast pocket he withdrew a wallet containing notes, and from the
trousers pocket a handful of silver.
Then he went to the telephone and rang up Jessica. But the voice
which answered was not hers.
“Ask Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson to come to the telephone, please,”
he said.
“Is that Mr. Stapleton?”
“Yes.”
“John speaking, sir, the footman. I am afraid she can’t, sir. She
has been taken suddenly ill.”
“Ill! How? In what way?”
“She fainted dead off, sir, not five minutes after you had gone.”
Stapleton paused for an instant. All at once an idea flashed in
upon him.
“John!”
“Sir?”
“Is anybody near the telephone? Can anybody hear you
speaking?”
“One moment, sir.”
Stapleton heard a door being quietly closed.
“Nobody can hear me now, sir.”
“Then tell me—don’t speak loud—did Mrs. Robertson take
anything, I mean drink or eat anything, after I had gone out just
now?”
There was a brief pause, then:
“Yes, sir, she drank a glass of champagne at the sideboard.”
“Was anybody with her? Or near her? Did anybody ask her if she
would have a glass of wine?”
“Well, yes, sir. A gentleman asked her. I happened to be near.
And I did notice that a lady was by when she drank it. They each had
a glass of wine.”
“Do you know the lady and gentleman?”
“I know them well by sight, sir, but not their names. They have
been to supper before; once or twice, I think, but they don’t often
come.”
“Do they come together?”
“I think so, sir.”
“And you could describe their appearance to me?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Thank you, John. Of course you will say nothing of all this to
anybody. You won’t forget that?”
“You can rely upon my absolute discretion, sir.”
“Good. I shall be back at Cavendish Square within an hour, and I
will see you then.”
CHAPTER VIII.
IN WHICH A DISCOVERY IS MADE.

It was past four in the morning when Aloysius Stapleton got back
to his flat in Sandringham Mansions, Maida Vale. After remaining
with La Planta nearly an hour, he had gone back to Cavendish
Square, where he found Jessica still unconscious, her symptoms
being somewhat similar to Archie’s, though her brain, while she
slept, seemed to be active. Several times she had, he was told,
murmured incoherently, and twice she had spoken several words.
Even when he arrived there her lips kept quivering at intervals, as if
she were dreaming.
“How long ago did the guests leave?” he inquired of her maid.
“The last few of them have not been long gone,” she answered,
“not above twenty minutes.”
“Do you know which were the last to go?”
“I don’t, sir. I only heard them leaving. Ought she not to be put to
bed now, as you don’t wish the doctor to be sent for?”
“Yes, take her upstairs. She will be all right in the morning.”
“I sincerely hope so. She is never taken this way—never.”
The maid spoke almost reproachfully, as though Stapleton were in
some way responsible for her mistress having fainted.
“Send John to me,” he said to her sharply.
When Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson had been carried up to her
bedroom, Stapleton took the footman into the dining-room and shut
the door.
“Now, tell me,” he said, “who were the last to leave to-night?”
The young footman described them. Yes, he admitted that among
them were the two guests, the man and the woman, who had been
with Jessica while she drank champagne at the sideboard, but he did
not know their names.
Stapleton’s brain worked rapidly while he mechanically undressed
in his flat in Sandringham Mansions. There could be no doubt, in his
opinion, that the hand that had drugged La Planta had also drugged
Jessica. In addition, he felt convinced that whoever had done it had
been among the guests at Cavendish Square that evening. But who
could it have been, and with what object had he, or she, committed
the despicable act?
After ascertaining by telephone next morning that both Archie and
Jessica had recovered and were once more in their right senses, he
drove in his car first to the Albany.
Archie, wrapped in an elaborate dressing-gown of Japanese
corded silk, was having breakfast in his bedroom. He looked
unusually pale, Stapleton thought directly he entered, and there were
dark marks under his eyes.
“I wish you would tell me, Louie,” Archie said, “what happened to
me last night, and how I managed to come away from the Alhambra
without my hat. I might have imagined I had drunk too much—had
there been anything to drink.”
“I can tell you nothing, because I know nothing,” Stapleton
answered, and went on to explain how they had suddenly missed
him from the box, and what had happened afterwards.
“Who was it brought the message for Jessica, and why did you
leave the box without delivering it to her?” he ended.
His friend drew his hand across his forehead then pressed his
fingers on his eyes, as though trying to remember.
“I am sorry, Louie,” he said at last, “but I have not the faintest
recollection of receiving any message, or of leaving the box. I can
remember the ballet, or rather the first part of it. After that my mind is
a blank. The next thing I remember is waking up this morning and
feeling very rotten. I feel at sixes and sevens still.”
Not until lunch time was Stapleton able to see Jessica, and then
she complained of a headache and of feeling utterly limp. When he
questioned her she replied that she had no recollection of drinking
champagne at the sideboard, or even of talking to him after supper.
She remembered her anxiety about Archie, she said, and coming
home in the car, and Stapleton sitting beside her at supper, and
chemin de fer and roulette being played. But there her memory
stopped.
“That is as I expected,” Stapleton said when she had ceased
speaking. “Your symptoms are similar to Archie’s. I should say,
therefore, that you were both doped with the same drug, one effect
of which apparently is to deaden memory not from the time it is
taken, but from a little while before it is taken. I think it is clear that
the individual who came to the Alhambra with a message for you
intended, by some means, to give you the drug then. But Archie took
the message, went out, and presumably met the person who brought
it. Then, having failed to see you, this person succeeded in drugging
Archie, came on here—he, or it may have been a woman, was
evidently among your guests—and actually drugged you in your own
house. Now the question is—why was it done? and by whom?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Have you missed anything? Is your jewelry intact, and are your
other valuables safe?”
“I hope so. I haven’t looked.”
“Then you had better look at once.”
And then it was the discovery was made that the safe in her
boudoir had been opened and ransacked. It had contained, in
addition to a rope of priceless pearls and a quantity of uncut
diamonds, four thousand five hundred and sixty-eight pounds in
Bank of England notes, Treasury notes, and cash, moneys kept
there for banking the roulette and the other games of chance
frequently played at her house. The lot had vanished, and the safe
had been relocked and the key replaced in the little bag which
Jessica always carried concealed about her person. Unless a
duplicate key had been employed, which seemed hardly probable.
Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson was in despair; yet she did not make a
scene or become hysterical as so many women would have done in
the circumstances. On the contrary, she kept her wits about her, and
remained singularly calm.
Just then John, the footman, entered the room with some letters.
“Well, what am I to do about it?” she said to Stapleton, controlling
her voice.
“We can’t do better than consult the Metropolitan Secret Agency,”
he answered. “If they can’t help us I don’t believe anybody can. Have
you the numbers of the notes?”
“No.”
“The Agency may be able to trace the pearls, anyhow. There are
only a few places in England and on the Continent where stolen
pearls of that sort can be disposed of, and Stothert was telling me
only the other day that he knows the whereabouts of every receiver
of stolen goods in this country, and on the Continent, too.”
The footman, having delivered the letters, retired, closing the door
behind him.
Stapleton and Jessica looked at each other oddly.
“Let us go and find Archie,” she said, preparing to rise. “You say
he told you he might remain at home?”
But at that moment the door opened, and the footman, entering
again, announced:
“Captain Preston and Mr. Blenkiron.”
Jessica bit her lip. Then, as the visitors came in, she received
them with her dazzling smile.
“How glad I am to see you after all this time,” she exclaimed. “Mr.
Stapleton was speaking of you not five minutes ago, and I asked him
what had become of you both—I thought you must have left town.”
“I am rarely in town,” Blenkiron said. “I live in the country, you
know.”
“So you do. I had forgotten. But you, Captain Preston, I never see
you anywhere. Don’t you live in town?”
“Yes, but I rarely go about; my leg is such a handicap, you see.
We happened to be passing, so I suggested our calling on the
chance of finding you at home. I have not been here since you gave
that delightful musical At Home—eight or nine months ago it must
have been—but I shall never forget the way your friend sang
Tchaikowsky’s ‘None but the Weary Heart.’ It was too gorgeous.”
“Are you so fond of music? You are not like most soldiers.”
“The one thing I love.”
“The one thing?” she laughed mischievously. “That I can hardly
believe!”
For an instant their eyes met. Hers were laughing, mischievous
still. His had grown suddenly hard.
“Some one told me the other day,” Blenkiron happened to remark,
“that you lived at one time in Queensland, Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson. I
have been a great deal in Australia. Was it long ago?”
“Longer than I like to think about,” she answered. “I was a girl
when my parents sent me home.”
“You mean to England?”
“Yes.”
“What town were you in, or near, when you lived in Queensland?”
“Monkarra—if one can call it a town,” she answered.
“Indeed! I know Monkarra. I have been there several times. I
wonder I never met you or your people.”
“Australia is a big place, Mr. Blenkiron.”
“But its population is small, and Monkarra, as you say, is only a
hamlet. Some one told me your father’s name was Robertson.”
“People seem to have been talking a lot to you about me,” she
said quickly.
“And can you be surprised?”
The words conveyed two meanings, and Jessica turned the
conversation.
“As you are fond of music,” she said to Preston, “you must honor
me again with your company the next time I have any. Men, for the
most part, are such Philistines. The only ‘music’ they seem to care
for is comic opera and ragtime.”
She talked more or less mechanically, for all the while her
thoughts were running on the loss she had just sustained. One by
one her guests of the previous night passed in review through her
mind. Each was in turn carefully considered, then dismissed as
being above suspicion in connection with the theft.
Then, suddenly, for no apparent reason, she thought of Cora
Hartsilver, and of her husband who had killed himself. Quickly
Yootha Hagerston followed—she rose into the vision of her
imagination with extraordinary distinctness. Both women she
disliked, she reflected; and she was sure that they disliked her. And
now she remembered being told—yes, Archie La Planta had told her
—that Captain Preston admired the girl. Archie had said that Preston
“admired her extremely.”
And that girl, and Preston himself, also Cora Hartsilver, had been
trying—this Archie had also told her—to extract information from him
concerning herself and her past. Could it be mere coincidence that
Preston and his friend Blenkiron had called unexpectedly like this—
the first time they had ever called—and that Blenkiron should have
asked her questions about Australia? Who could have told him, she
wondered, that her father’s name was Robertson?
“Talking of Australia,” Blenkiron’s voice held her, “your father has
been dead a good many years, I suppose?”
“Ten years,” she heard herself saying; and unconsciously she
wondered why she said it.
“And your mother?”
“I was quite a child when she died.”
“And they lived at Monkarra?”
“My father did. My mother died in Charleville.”
“Strange,” Blenkiron was speaking to himself, “I should not have
met your father, or your mother, during the years I was in
Queensland.”
“But why should you have met them? What were you doing in
Australia?”
“I did all sorts of things there. I prospected for gold for some
years; and for years I was working on a railway—engineering work,
you understand; and then for a time I was sheep farming out there. It
is, in my opinion, the one country on earth.”
“And yet you have settled in England.”
“Because my interests are all in England now. The war made such
a change.”
Suddenly Preston rose.
“I must be going, Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson,” he said. “I hope you
will invite me the next time you have music.”
“Indeed I shall not forget—that is, if I have your address. Shall I
write it down?”
She went over to the escritoire, and he followed her.
“Thirty-three, Q., Fig Tree Court, Temple,” he said, and she made
a note of it.
He limped slowly down the stairs, supporting himself on his stick,
and Blenkiron followed.
As they made their way into Oxford Street, Blenkiron spoke.
“A clever woman—a damned clever woman,” he said. “And what
a presence! What a personality! Did you notice that to every question
I put to her she had an answer—pat! Yet I don’t believe a word she
said, or that she or her parents were ever in Australia. There is some
mystery about that woman, and about that fellow Stapleton who is
always in her pocket.”
They had turned into Oxford Street, when Blenkiron suddenly
caught his companion by the sleeve.
“Look,” he said, “there goes young La Planta, on his way to see
our friends. That lad, too, I have grave doubts about!”
CHAPTER IX.
BEFRIENDING A REPORTER.
Though several weeks had passed, no trace had been discovered
of Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s missing property. For reasons of her
own she had prevented any mention of the robbery being made in
the newspapers, and apparently even the Metropolitan Secret
Agency had this time failed to make good.
Preparations were in progress for the great ball to be given at the
Albert Hall by Aloysius Stapleton and his friend, young La Planta,
and as Jessica still said she preferred not to act as hostess on that
occasion, Stapleton had succeeded in enlisting the services of a
well-known peeress who, helped by friends of her own, would
receive his guests on the eventful night.
It was expected that “all London” would be there, and as the ball
had been organized by Stapleton and La Planta ostensibly in aid of
some charitable object, the newspaper press had laid itself out to
give plenty of publicity.
“If I had arranged to make it a private ball,” Stapleton observed to
Jessica one evening, “it would have cost me an enormous sum, and
hundreds who have now bought tickets would not have done so. I
was right to take your advice—you remember telling me the way to
make a ball of this sort an unqualified success, and at the same time
run it at other people’s expense, was to make it a ‘charity’ concern;
get the newspapers to print columns of fancy stories about it and
publish lists of names of people with titles likely to be present; and let
it be known that women of high social standing would receive the
guests. That advice was excellent, Jessica. There has been such a
rush for tickets that if it continues we shall have to stop selling.”
“Have I ever given you bad advice?” Jessica asked with a smile.
“In matters of this sort, and for that matter in most cases, a clever
woman’s advice is the safest advice to follow. You have not yet
asked me what I am going to wear. It is too late now to tell you. But
this I can say—my dress will surprise you.”
“I don’t want to be surprised.”
“Naturally. Nobody does. But I have a reason for wanting to
surprise you at your own ‘charity’ ball,” and she laughed. “You will
find out why, later. Have you any idea what Cora Hartsilver and her
precious friend, Yootha Hagerston, intend to wear?”
“Not the slightest. How should I? And why should their dresses
interest you?”
“They do interest me, and that is sufficient. If you have not enough
acumen to guess the reason, I don’t think much of your intellectual
foresight,” and she laughed again in her deep contralto voice.
Meanwhile Jessica Mervyn-Robertson and Cora Hartsilver met
often at receptions, dances and other social functions, and, though
outwardly friendly, each knew the other secretly hated her.
At a lunch party in Mayfair during the first days of June there had
been talk about Ascot, and Jessica had mentioned casually that on
Gold Cup Day fortune invariably favored her. Twice, she said, she
had found herself at the end of the day much richer than in the
morning, “and in other ways,” she added, “Gold Cup Day has helped
me towards happiness.”
“Would it be too much to inquire what the other ways were?”
Cora, who sat near her at the angle of the table, said lightly. “I can’t
see how good fortune could come to anybody on a race day except
through the actual racing unless——”
“Unless what?” Jessica asked quickly, with an odd look, as Cora
checked herself.
“Well, one might happen to meet somebody whom afterwards one
might come to like very much,” Cora replied with a far-away look.
One or two people, happening to remember they had heard
somewhere that Jessica had first become acquainted with Aloysius
Stapleton at an Ascot meeting, smiled.
“I agree,” Jessica said with exaggerated indifference. “But the
same thing might happen to anybody anywhere—say at lunch at the
Ritz, or at one of my own musical At Homes, or at——”
She was interrupted by one of the men at the end of the table
who, not seeing she was engaged in conversation, inquired if she
would make one of the party he meant to drive down to Ascot on his
coach.
“It is rather short notice, Mrs. Robertson,” he added, “but until this
morning I had not actually decided to go down. Do say ‘Yes’ if you
have not made other arrangements.”
“I shall be delighted to come,” she answered after a moment’s
hesitation. “I suppose you mean Gold Cup Day?”
“Yes, Gold Cup Day. That is good of you. Then it is settled?”
“Lucky again!” Cora Hartsilver said with a curious laugh. “I shall
end by becoming superstitious myself. Will you give me all the
winners on Gold Cup Day, Jessica?”
“Oh, then you will be there?”
“If I am lucky, too.”
“And I suppose Yootha with you? Oh! but I needn’t ask,” she
ended with a malicious little laugh.
The luncheon came to an end just then, which was as well, for the
two women were each awaiting an opportunity to deal the other
metaphorically a blow between the eyes. For weeks past their hatred
had been smoldering. To-day it had come near to bursting into flame.
When Cora met Yootha that afternoon, she at once told her of her
passage-of-arms at lunch with Jessica Robertson, and of Jessica’s
hardly veiled sneer at their friendship.
“Why let that annoy you, Cora dear?” Yootha exclaimed. “Heaven
knows why the woman dislikes you so, or why she dislikes me, as I
know she does. I expect the truth is she has heard that we are trying
to find out who she is. And I mean to go on trying, until I do find out.”
“And I am with you. I am as certain as that I am standing here that
she is an impostor of some sort, though up to the present she and
her friends, Stapleton and La Planta, have been clever enough to
hide the truth. Has it never struck you as strange, Yootha, that not a
word got into the papers about the theft of her jewelry and things,
though all one’s friends knew about it? What has made me think of
that now is that I was told this morning by a friend of mine who writes
or edits, or does something for some paper—no, you don’t know him
—that Stapleton and Jessica Robertson both moved heaven and
earth to prevent the affair being reported in the press.”
“But why?”
“Exactly—but why? I was wondering if she could have some
reason for not wanting her name to get into the papers, but as one
sees it in all the ‘social columns’ every day——”
“That may have been the reason, nevertheless. The jewelry, et
cetera, were, if you remember, apparently stolen by one of her
guests that night, and possibly she suspects one of them and is
afraid of the scandal which would follow if he, or she, were convicted
of the theft. Indeed, I can’t think what other motive she can have had
for not wanting anything to be said in the papers about the crime.”
“I wonder,” Cora said thoughtfully.
They would probably have been surprised if they had known that
Captain Preston, too, who of course had also heard of the robbery,
had been puzzling his brain to account for Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s
aversion from press publicity in connection with the robbery.
“I tell you it’s devilish odd, George,” he had said to his friend
Blenkiron only the night before, as the two sat smoking together in
his rooms in Fig Tree Court, “that woman and her dear friend
Stapleton being so desperately anxious to keep the affair out of the
papers. If you or I were burgled should we care a button if the facts
were made public or not? Would anybody else whose house was
burgled object to the fact being known? Then why this hush-hush
movement on the part of Jessica Robertson and her friends—young
La Planta, too, helped to keep it quiet.”
“Who told you?”
“Harry Hopford. He was with me in Flanders a long time, and I
came across him in Whitefriars only the other day—he is back on his
newspaper again. He said the steps that woman and her two friends
took to prevent mention being made in the papers of the robbery at
her house during one of her night parties, aroused a good deal of
conjecture in Fleet Street. Some of the reporters were actually paid
to say nothing about it. He told me so himself.”
For some moments both were silent.
“She must have had some strong motive for wanting to hush it
up,” Blenkiron said at last.
“That is what I say. Now, what can the reason have been? I tell
you again, George, there is more behind those people than anybody
suspects. And who are they? And where do they come from? You
can try as you like, but you won’t find out.”
“I certainly don’t believe Mrs. Robertson’s story that her father
was a sheep farmer in Queensland. I know every town and village in
Queensland, have known them over twenty years, and it is
impossible that if her father had been sheep farming out there, even
in a small way, I should not have known him, at any rate by name.”
“It seems that the police were not notified of the theft. Only the
Metropolitan Secret Agency was told about it, and for a wonder it
failed to discover a clue. You know how clever that Agency is in
running thieves to earth. I am told it hardly ever fails, though there
are queer rumors as to the methods it employs to catch criminals.”
It was Harry Hopford, though Preston did not know it, who had
told Cora Hartsilver about the hushing up in the press. They were not
intimately acquainted; Hopford had met Cora at a dance one night
which he was attending professionally, and afterwards they had
recognized each other at the Chelsea Flower Show and engaged in
conversation. Thus neither Hopford nor Cora suspected that the
other was acquainted with Captain Preston.
It so happened that, some days after this conversation, Hopford
had occasion to call to see Stapleton to obtain from him some facts
about the approaching ball at the Albert Hall. Being, as all journalists
have to be, of an inquisitive disposition, he referred incidentally to
the theft of jewelry and notes from Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s house
in Cavendish Square, and casually inquired if the stolen property had
been recovered.
“I am sure I don’t know,” Stapleton answered quickly. “What
makes you think I should know?”
“I thought you might,” Hopford replied calmly, “as you are
acquainted with the lady and were at supper at her house on the
night of the robbery.”
“Who told you I was there?”
“Oh, the press generally knows these things.”
“‘The press,’ as you call it, is a damned nuisance at times,”
Stapleton said sharply. “I suppose a report of that robbery would
have appeared in every paper if Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson had not
asked the editors to refrain from giving her undesirable notoriety. I
can’t think why newspapers always want to publish detailed reports
of crimes. Such reports do a lot of harm, I am sure—a lot of harm.”
“The papers wouldn’t publish the reports if the public was not
anxious to read them,” Hopford replied with assurance. “You should
blame the public, Mr. Stapleton, not the press.”
“Nothing ever did appear about that robbery, did it?” Stapleton
asked, looking at the young reporter rather oddly.
“Not so far as I am aware.”
Stapleton remained silent for a minute. He seemed to be thinking.
“Are you ever in need of money, my lad?” he inquired suddenly.
Hopford laughed.
“Show me the journalist who isn’t,” he said. “Why?”
“Supposing I made it worth your while——”

Incubation in Problem Solving and Creativity Unconscious Processes 1St Edition Kenneth J Gilhooly Online Ebook Texxtbook Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Incubation in Problem Solving and Creativity Unconscious Processes 1St Edition Kenneth J Gilhooly Online Ebook Texxtbook Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Incubation In Problem Solving And

Creativity Unconscious Processes 1st

Encyclopedia of Community Policing and Problem Solving

Negotiation Processes for Problem Solving 3rd Edition

Legal problem solving and syllogistic analysis a guide

Problem Solving with C 10th Edition Walter J Savitch

Odell's Clinical Problem Solving in Dentistry 4th

Mathematics in Middle and Secondary School A Problem

Fun and Games Recess Problem Solving Dona Herweck Rice

Problem Solving Cognitive Mechanisms and Formal Models

Can problems be solved by setting them aside or by sleeping on them?

Kenneth J. Gilhooly is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the Univer-

ISBN: 978-1-138-55151-0 (hbk)

1 Problems, problem solving and creativity 1

2 Historical background to the “incubation” concept 25

3 Early laboratory based studies of incubation 45

4 Broad theoretical approaches to incubation:

5 Unconscious work: theoretical discussion 67

7 Overview and conclusions 106

Introduction: problems, problems, problems

layout of standard pieces on the standard board, the goal is well-defined

systematically possible re-arrangements of the letters “ccpteno”, one

Solving non-insight problems: forward search and

looking to be nearer to the goal (getting warmer!). The process repeats

6. HHH BOAT OOO

10. OO BOAT HHH O

11. BOAT HHH

12. O BOAT HHH OO

14. OO BOAT HHH O

15. Goal BOAT HHH OOO

FIGURE 1.2 Problem space for Hobbits and Orcs.

Problem reduction and means-ends analysis

(2) (3) (4)

(5) (6) (7)

FIGURE 1.3 Three disc Tower of Hanoi problem reduction graph.

To make the problem manageable, people generally come to apply

Solving insight problems: re-structuring

Figure 1.4 Reversible Face-Vases picture (Rubin, 1915).

• Karl Duncker : X-ray problem (1945)

FIGURE 1.6 Possible solution to Duncker’s X-ray problem.

Barriers to insight: set

Further barriers to insight: functional fixity

Comparing insight vs non-insight problems

Warmth ratings leading to solution

In a further study on this question, Jung-Beeman et al. (2004) used

What word links “boot”, “summer” and “ground”? (Answer: “camp”).

Representational change theory

TABLE 1.1 Stages of Insight

Stage Process Experience

Source: Ohlsson (1992).

1. Elaboration: adding new information to the problem representation

If all goes well, the re-structuring leads to retrieval of a useful operator or

Working memory, insight and non-insight

special process hypothesis. Another approach is to examine the effects of

Impasse → insight sequence: necessary or not?

Generic Parts Technique

STRING ONLY WIRE CORE SCENTED UNSCENTED

FIGURE 1.11 Generic parts diagram breaking a candle into components.

Insight processes: conclusions

These problems can also often be classed as “divergent” (many possible

The creative work is a novel work that is acceptable or tenable or

Stein’s remarks highlight that value is a judgement by a group at a point in

Big “C” Creativity refers to major productions of scientific, technological,

FIGURE 1.2 Problem space for Hobbits and Orcs.

FIGURE 1.3 Three disc Tower of Hanoi problem reduction graph.

Figure 1.4 Reversible Face-Vases picture (Rubin, 1915).

FIGURE 1.6 Possible solution to Duncker’s X-ray problem.

TABLE 1.1 Stages of Insight

FIGURE 1.11 Generic parts diagram breaking a candle into components.